


Comfortable

by sunshinemellow



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 10:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24469786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinemellow/pseuds/sunshinemellow
Summary: The aftermath of Kakashi showing up where he shouldn't have."He just stared up at her as she shook with rage, with frustration, with something else she couldn’t quite name. All she knew was that she couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t take the charged silences in his office as they flicked through reports together late into the night, or the slight tension in his jaw when she had to perform her examinations of his restored eye as director of the hospital. She was confused, she was tired, and she was angry."
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 123





	Comfortable

“You have to have noticed.”

Sakura flicked her gaze to Ino, who was settled far too comfortably into the plastic chair in front of her desk. Most of the time, Sakura wasn’t in her office. She usually treated patients in their wards, so her office had become a coffee-stained mess. It was brimming with scattered reports—of both her patients and her missions— and empty packages of food that had been inhaled quickly between breaks.

Sakura was normally a neat person, but her office was where she let loose. It was where she came to find brief respite after coaxing people back from the brink of death. She didn’t quite appreciate Ino making her feel uncomfortable in what was supposed to be her secret and messy space.

“I haven’t noticed anything, Ino, because there is nothing to notice.”

Ino rolled her eyes so hard Sakura nearly expected them to fall out.

“Please, Sakura. You’re a smart woman.”  
  


“Wow, a compliment? When was the last time you’ve given me one of those?”

Ino just shook her head. “See, you know you’re doing that because you want to deflect. You think you can get me to stop demanding that you acknowledge what is so obvious to you and quite frankly everyone else.”

“I’m not deflecting anything, Ino. I don’t have time for this.”

Ino’s eyes sparked. “Well, that’s all fine and everything. You can pretend it is harmless and that you can keep on ignoring it, but what are you going to do the next time you are on some scary ANBU mission—”

Sakura shot her a sharp look. “No one is supposed to know I do _that_ ,” she snapped. “And I can’t believe you would be absurd enough to try and use something so serious to make a point about something as silly as _this.“_

“Really? Well what about when he thought you were hurt last week? What did he do that was so silly, Sakura?”

Sakura tried to maintain the steel of her expression but found it crumbling. She was tired. And not just of Ino.

“Ino, he would have done that for Sasuke or Naruto in a heartbeat. You’re trying very hard to read something significant into what is obviously and completely platonic.”

“Sakura, he left Konoha to go see if you were all right. _You_. Based on a stupid little rumor. And how did he know where to find you in the first place? Aren’t your _serious_ missions supposed to be internal with the ANBU? Unless a certain someone has been telling him about her missions and sharing a level of confidence that is typically only reserved for partner—”

“Ino, please.”

Ino broke off when she saw the sudden sadness fill Sakura’s face. Sakura cringed, feeling the last of her emotional wall crumble. She took a deep breath and steepled her fingers.

“Look, I have always been something of a _concern_ for them. It started years ago when we were just genin. It isn’t uncommon for them to assume I can’t handle something. And while I deeply resent that and find it infuriating, it means occasionally they do stupid things under the assumption that I would have died if they hadn’t intervened. That’s all it was, Ino.”

Ino reached out and put a hand on Sakura’s arm. “Sakura, you are long past the point of people thinking you can’t handle yourself. It has been years and years.”

She sighed and stood. “I came here because I care about you as a friend. I have a lot of respect for you, Sakura. And I’m tired of watching you convince yourself nothing is going on because you have some stupid idea that he feels guilty for not training you when you were younger or that he just wants to protect you as a teammate. You’re long past needing any instruction from him. Anyone who has seen you fight in the last year knows you don’t need to be protected.”

Sakura sat in silence as Ino wound her way through the stacks of discarded materials to the door.

“If you want the truth, Sakura, he did it because he was scared. He was scared that what someone had said about a mission going badly in the south had been about you. And fear makes people do stupid things.”

Sakura felt a sardonic smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Ino, I don’t think Kakashi has been afraid of anything in a very long time.”

Ino fixed her with one last withering look. “No, Sakura. He’s absolutely terrified of you. But I don’t think he needs to be. It’s not as if you’re ever going to try and talk to him about any of this.”

And with that Ino slid out of the room and left Sakura to her mess.

* * *

She gasped as her fist sent sharp ripples through the earth around her. The sound was nearly deafening, as roots ripped apart and snapped in protest. Her knuckles felt white-hot, the imprint of the ground temporarily burnt into them.

She stared at the green pulse of chakra hovering around her palm, knowing she was stupid to be wasting it on training while so angry. The training field behind her was a torn wreck, with shattered trunks and craters littering it.

She had needed to feel powerful—to feel something peel away from underneath her hand and shatter. She knew the rest of her problems would never be solved so easily.

“Is something wrong?”

She turned to face him, swiping sweat out of her eyes. She had vaguely sensed his chakra signature approaching. He had been trying to mask it, but at this point she knew it too well to be fooled anymore. She nearly wanted to scream at the irony of it all.

His face was inscrutable. They hadn’t spoken since they returned to Konoha, her seething behind her mask and him stone-faced and silent in response to the rage she was barely keeping contained.

When they had gotten back his ANBU guard had rushed to intercept them. She watched them hesitate when they saw her, torn between treating her as a threat that had somehow kidnapped the Hokage, and between recognizing that the mask she wore marked her as one of their own. In the moment, she hadn’t known how she would ever forgive Kakashi for making her experience their indecision.

“Nothing is wrong,” she finally heard herself say. She stared at him and the careful and controlled look in his eyes. She saw the slight hesitance that would have been undetectable to nearly anyone else. He knew she was upset, and she knew that she would not be helping him fix it this time.

“That’s interesting, because today someone else brought by the hospital report.”

“I was busy.”

“Ah.”

She stared at him a little while longer. Over the years since he had become Hokage, they had become better at reading one another. After all the times he had asked for her advice, and without quite saying it, her support, their silences had become easier to interpret. She knew he would understand this one to mean that she wanted an apology, and that she would not beg for it.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said.

Blood rushed to her head. She had gotten what she wanted. Why wasn’t she satisfied?

“Why did you do it,” she asked, to fuel the sudden gaping hunger that had opened up inside of her. She didn’t know where it had come from, but suddenly she was desperate to know why—why he had come to find her. If it was because he was afraid like Ino had said, in the way she herself had suspected him to be but was too afraid to really, truly believe.

One of his hands unconsciously drifted to the back of his head. She could almost hear him trying to think of what he could possibly say.

“I was worried about you.”

“Worried about me,” she echoed. Suddenly she was furious. She stormed over to him, ignoring the fact that she was coated with dust and debris and that the earth was crackling beneath her footsteps.

“Worried,” she hissed, jabbing a finger into his chest that sent him sprawling back. She couldn’t quite bring herself to feel guilty. “I am an _adult_ , Kakashi.”

He stared up at her from the ground where he had been shoved. Something reverent and something self-loathing seemed to start seeping into his gaze.

“I know,” he murmured to the ground as he averted his eyes. “I certainly know.”

“Is this because you still have some image of me as some stupid girl who can’t fight her own battles? We both know you never taught me how to—” he flinched but she continued, her anger building, “but it has been a _decade_ , Kakashi. Ten years since you were responsible for my training. And somewhere between then and now I’ve learned how to take care of myself, so please, tell me why you decided you would leave a nation leaderless for a few days because some bad information had been circulated by a bad source.”

He just stared up at her as she shook with rage, with frustration, with something else she couldn’t quite name. All she knew was that she couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t take the charged silences in his office as they flicked through reports together late into the night, or the slight tension in his jaw when she had to perform her examinations of his restored eye as director of the hospital. She was confused, she was tired, and she was angry.

“I was scared.”

Her eyes snapped back to him as he propped himself up on his elbows and pushed himself into a sitting position.

“You were scared?”

She saw the edge of his mouth twist underneath the fabric of his mask. “I’ll be honest. I imagined not seeing your face each night as you brought in the hospital report, not hearing about your shift, not having lukewarm tea over dense documents I didn’t want to decipher by myself. You see, I had already experienced about a week of it after you’d left. Quite frankly, the idea of it lasting forever was rather fear-inducing.”

Something in her chest flared. She could only blink at him as he pushed himself to his feet again.

“I’m realizing it is easier to have gone on missions than to wait for them to be completed. You have to forgive me, I’ve spent my life on the other side. I’ve never been stuck inside the gates imagining the worst. It was a lapse of judgement, a desire to return to the good old days,” he said with irony.

He crinkled his eyes with an affected air of casualness, as if admissions of fear were common and easily dismissible from him. In a split second, she decided his bravery merited a little from her.

She reached out slowly and wrapped her hand around his. She could feel the warmth of his skin through the fabric. She could feel him tense, just slightly. It wouldn’t have been noticeable if she hadn’t become an expert in the ways that bodies move and muscles operate together. But then again, maybe she would have noticed.

“I get afraid, too,” she finally said. “I’m afraid I won’t come back to check on your eye, or to make sure you’re not getting lazy and complacent with your training.” She felt her had tighten around his. “Sometimes I’m afraid someone will try to kill you. That they’ll use a new poison I won’t be able to create an antidote for.”

His eye softened. “We both know that is stupid.”

She laughed nervously, waiting for the way their hands fit together to become awkward or unnatural.

It didn’t.

“I haven’t really known what to do with this fear,” she trailed off. “Do you?”

He stared at her steadily, knowing what she was really asking him. “I think,” he began slowly, “A large part of my fear was how you would react to it. Whether or not it would make you… uncomfortable.”

She smiled, the heat of his hand and the soft but guarded concern in his eyes moving her. Her hand left his to cup the side of his face, her palm against the fabric of his mask and her fingers brushing the edge of skin beneath his eye.

“I think we’ve both grown rather comfortable around each other the last few years. Wouldn't you agree?”

He smiled. “Yes. I suppose we have grown rather comfortable.”

She closed her eyes, trying to calm the swirl of new emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Triumph? Panic? She was preparing to shove them all away and return to the conversation when the air in front of her face suddenly shifted.

Her eyes flashed open to find his, mere inches from hers. She felt him smile, the texture of his mask’s fabric nearly brushing her lips.

“I’ve been afraid of doing this for awhile now, but it has been something preoccupying me of late. Do you think you would be comfortable with—”

He never finished his sentence as her hand flashed up, ripping down his mask and then crushing her lips to his. She grinned into the warmth of his mouth, feeling the hard ball of fear and anxiety that had been slowly coalescing at her core over the last few months melt away. His hands curled into the back of her hair, and she mused that never once had she felt so at _home._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Am trying to get back into writing and it has been a bit of a stressful/messy process so thank you for taking the time to read!


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